Milohttp://www.businessinsider.com/category/milo
en-usSun, 02 Aug 2015 17:08:41 -0400Sun, 02 Aug 2015 17:08:41 -0400The latest news on Milo from Business Insiderhttp://static3.businessinsider.com/assets/images/bilogo-250x36-wide-rev.pngBusiness Insiderhttp://www.businessinsider.com
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-this-guy-sold-his-two-year-old-company-to-ebay-for-75-million-2012-1How This Guy Sold His Two-Year-Old Company To eBay For $75 Million (EBAY)http://www.businessinsider.com/how-this-guy-sold-his-two-year-old-company-to-ebay-for-75-million-2012-1
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:50:30 -0500Boonsri Dickinson
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4f199a6d69beddba31000047/jack-abraham-milo-ebay.jpg" border="0" alt="Jack Abraham Milo eBay" /></p><p>Last night, Milo co-founder <a href="Facebook.com/jackabraham">Jack Abraham</a> explained how he sold his startup to eBay for $75 million after less than two years.</p>
<p>He was speaking to a roomful of entrepreneurs, investors, and bankers at Rocketspace&nbsp;in San Francisco.</p>
<p>Here's where it started: after a four-month gig as a consultant, Abraham didn't want a normal job ever again in his life.</p>
<p>He was set on coming up with a big idea. Around the same time, in 2007, he became fascinated by shopping and how it related to e-commerce.</p>
<p>In 2008, he started a local shopping startup called Milo with two friends.&nbsp;The friends got an apartment in Philadelphia and slept on airbeds while they worked feverishly to build a product. After some user testing, the team realized that people wanted to see and feel things before they bought it online. The time was right, he said, so he dropped out of school and moved to Silicon Valley, away from his friends and family.</p>
<p>Working out of an apartment in Palo Alto, Abraham began to network. One of Abraham's&nbsp;friends knew <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/keith-rabois">Keith Rabois</a>. Abraham asked to be introduced. But Rabois didn't want to meet him.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Abraham didn't give up. He had big plans to bring&nbsp;every product on every shelf onto the Internet and he wanted to see if Rabois was interested in investing.</p>
<p>Finally after enough persistence, Abraham met Rabois. And sure enough, five minutes into the meeting, Rabois made a snap decision to invest. Rabois helped bring in other&nbsp;A-list investors such as <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/kevin-hartz">Kevin Hartz</a> of <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/eventbrite">Eventbrite</a> and <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/jawed-karim">Jawed Karim</a> of <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/youtube">YouTube</a> into the seed round.</p>
<p>Abraham kept a low profile while he built out his local shopping company. But after they raised an additional $4 million, people started to talk about them. Suddenly, 10 companies were interested in buying Milo.</p>
<p>Abraham stayed exclusive with eBay after they made their offer. "It's a relationship. You date to get to know each other. When it's getting serious and you begin to shop around, it's a risk,"&nbsp;Abraham said.</p>
<p>Abraham said he didn't want to be acquired by <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/microsoft">Microsoft</a> or <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/google">Google</a>, and knew eBay was a good fit. He adds, working on a partnership with a company is a great way to get to know them.</p>
<p><span class="gD"><a href="http://www.felicis.com/team/">Felicis Ventures' Aydin Senkut</a>, who helped connect Milo and eBay, explained that while </span>90 percent of success is about showing up, that extra 10 percent matters. And that's where investors can help.</p>
<p>"There are a few things that we can do for entrepreneurs that matter. We can help with the exit side by building relationships with acquirers. I met people at <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/goldman-sachs">Goldman Sachs</a>, who invited me to an event with people at eBay," Senkut said.</p>
<p>He later brought in three companies to Mark Carges, the chief technology officer&nbsp;of eBay. Carges wasn't interested in those options. After Carges scrolled through the rest of Senkut's portfolio of companies, Milo stuck out and he asked Senkut to make an intro to the shopping startup.</p>
<p>On December 2, 2010, eBay bought Milo for $75 million.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-this-guy-sold-his-two-year-old-company-to-ebay-for-75-million-2012-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/ebay-buying-milo-2010-12eBay Buying Milo.com For $75 Million (EBAY)http://www.businessinsider.com/ebay-buying-milo-2010-12
Thu, 02 Dec 2010 10:18:00 -0500Nicholas Carlson and Jay Yarow
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4ce44cca4bd7c80126040000-304-222/milo-before.jpg" border="0" alt="Milo before" width="304" height="222" /></p><p>eBay is acquiring local shopping site <a href="http://milo.com/">Milo.com</a>, we've learned from two sources.&nbsp;EBay paid $75 million cash.</p>
<p>Milo.com is a shopping search engine that lets you find out what's in stock at local stores.</p>
<p>How does Milo fit with eBay? eBay owns <a href="http://www.shopping.com/">shopping.com</a>, so it's a nice fit.</p>
<p>Beyond that, it plays in the same sandbox as Groupon, which Google is about to buy for $6 billion.</p>
<p>Anything that allows small retailers to market online without having to build a Web site or make any cash outlays is hot in e-commerce these days.</p>
<p>There's also some possible synergy with eBay's Red Laser mobile app, which allows people to take pictures of bar codes and get price comparisons.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Milo CEO Jack Abraham is only 24 years old.</p>
<p>The company has an impressive list of <a href="http://milo.com/investors">investors</a> including Keith Rabois, Ron Conway, Chris Dixon, Aydin Senkut, Aaron Patzer, and Jawed Krim, as well as many others.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> Milo confirms the acquisition <a href="http://milo.com/blog/milo-com-joins-the-ebay-family/">on its blog</a>.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ebay-buying-milo-2010-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/google-voice-uxui-designer-quits-for-startup-milo-2010-11Google Voice UX/UI Designer Quits For Startup Milo (GOOG)http://www.businessinsider.com/google-voice-uxui-designer-quits-for-startup-milo-2010-11
Wed, 17 Nov 2010 16:52:00 -0500Nicholas Carlson
<p>Milo &ndash; the shopping search engine that <strong></strong> you can use to find products in-stock at local stores &ndash; has poached a top Google UI/UX designer and made her Director of User Experience.</p>
<p>Her name is Melissa Sedano. At Google, she lead the design of Google Adwords, Analytics and Voice.</p>
<p>Google's had a hard time hanging on to talent lately. Partly that's because other companies, Facebook in particular, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-is-facebook-telling-recruits-that-has-them-turning-down-googles-cash-and-hot-startup-jobs-2010-11#comments">go after the companies engineers hard</a>. Partly its because Google is turning into a big company &ndash; <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/want-a-10-to-3-job-one-valley-ceo-recommends-google-2010-11">one where you don't have to work very hard</a>.</p>
<p>To combat the attrition issue, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-bonus-and-raise-2010-11">Google just gave all its employees a 10% raise and a $1,000 bonus</a>.</p>
<p>Melissa already revamped Milo's look. Check it out:</p>
<p>Before:</p>
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4ce44cca4bd7c80126040000/milo-before.jpg" border="0" alt="Milo before" /></p>
<p>Milo after:</p>
<p><img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4ce44cdccadcbb850a0c0000/milo-before.jpg" border="0" alt="Milo before" width="620" height="538" /></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-voice-uxui-designer-quits-for-startup-milo-2010-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/elevator-pitch-milo-2010-7ELEVATOR PITCH: Milo Lets You Search The Shelves Of Local Retailershttp://www.businessinsider.com/elevator-pitch-milo-2010-7
Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:46:30 -0400Nick Saint
<p>Palo Alto-based Milo is a shopping search engine for brick and mortar retailers.</p>
<p>Milo offers realtime search of the inventories of over 50,000 branches of 150 major retail chains, allowing you to instantly check if a product is on the shelves before going out to buy it.</p>
<p>We just sat down with Milo founder and CEO Jack Abraham. Here's his pitch:</p>
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